Electronic Book Review - racterhttp://electronicbookreview.com/tags/racter
enCybertext Killed the Hypertext Starhttp://electronicbookreview.com/thread/electropoetics/cyberdebates
<div class="field field-name-field-author field-type-node-reference field-label-hidden clearfix">
<div class="markup">by</div>
<div class="field-items">
<div class="field-item even">Nick Montfort</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="field field-name-field-publication-date field-type-datetime field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><span class="date-display-single">2000-12-30</span></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-source-url field-type-link-field field-label-inline clearfix"><div class="field-label">Source URL:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><h2>the hypertext murder case</h2>
<p>
“Hypertext is dead - ” declared Markku Eskelinen at Digital Arts<br />
and Culture ‘99 in Atlanta. “Cybertext killed it.”<br /><ebr-gloss position="1"></ebr-gloss><br />
No doubt, interesting hypertext poetry and fiction remains to be<br />
written, but - if we consider hypertext as a category that defines a<br />
special, valid space for authorship and criticism of computerized works<br />
of writing - Eskelinen is clearly right. The hypertext corpus has been<br />
produced; if it is to be resurrected, it will only be as part of a<br />
patchwork that includes other types of literary machines.
</p>
<p>
One viable category today, perhaps the most interesting one to<br />
consider, is that of “cybertext.” The word was first used in the<br />
critical discourse by Espen Aarseth in<br /><span class="booktitle">Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic<br />
Literature.</span><br />
The term denotes not all possible networks of lexia, but the<br />
more general set of text machines. These machines are operated by<br />
readers, and depending upon how they are operated they present different<br />
outputs, different texts for reading. The cybertext category therefore<br />
contains hypertext, which is operated by means of clicking and<br />
traversing links, but it is much broader. Indeed, Aarseth’s chief<br />
accomplishment in<br /><span class="booktitle">Cybertext</span><br />
was not to completely illuminate any particular interactive work<br />
or form of computational writing, but to erase the stifling hypertext<br />
boundary, and to redraw that boundary so that it demarcates a more<br />
interesting territory of reader-influenced texts. The cybertext terrain<br />
includes computational literary artifacts that are in some cases novel,<br />
although yet to be thoroughly explored. In other cases, the cybertexts<br />
included have some history, but one that is woefully neglected.
</p>
<p>
Notably absent from Aarseth’s definition of cybertext is mention<br />
of the link, and this missing link - or, more specifically, this<br />
replacement of the link with a more interesting feature of computational<br />
literary interaction - frees the new category from the chains of a<br />
critical-theory-influenced and essentially non-computational<br />
perspective. The definition of computer hypertext given in George<br />
Landow’s 1992<br /><span class="booktitle">Hypertext</span><br />
(a work that, like<br /><span class="booktitle">Cybertext</span>, took the category of literature under consideration as its<br />
eponym) was drawn from Roland Barthes’s<br /><span class="booktitle">S/Z</span>. Landow describes the form as “text composed of blocks of words<br />
(or images) linked electronically by multiple paths, chains, or trails<br />
in an open-ended, perpetually unfinished textuality described by the<br />
terms link, node, network, web, and path.” Landow also indicates here,<br />
by his use of the term “computer hypertext,” that non-computer hypertext<br />
- besides the hypertexts he describes as implicit, such as<br /><span class="booktitle">Ulysses</span><br />
- exists as well; Cort·zar’s<br /><span class="booktitle">Hopscotch</span><br />
and Queneau’s “Story as You Like It” are in this category.<br />
Oddly, the idea that hypertexts can appear in print has been a<br />
contentious point for some critics, many of whom either see the<br />
electronic digital computer as an essential element in defining a<br />
category of interactive texts or consider all texts (which one can,<br />
after all, skip around in) as hypertexts. Aarseth deftly disposes of<br />
this issue by simply making his definition independent of the medium in<br />
which the work is presented.
</p>
<p>As appropriate as the hypertext category might be for Landow’s<br />
topic (the embodiment of late 20th century critical theory in<br />
interactive computer text forms), it includes only a subset of<br />
electronic literary efforts. An extended analogy to the theory of<br />
computation demonstrates this restricted scope, and explains why the old<br />
collection called hypertext cannot continue to hold our interest as a<br />
critical category or as a category describing what literary efforts<br />
should be considered valid and worthy.</p>
<h2>classes of computational power</h2>
<p>There are four different classes of theoretical computers.<br />
Since theoretical computers can compute the same sorts of algorithms as<br />
can languages governed by formally-defined grammars, these four<br />
computational classes map directly to four classes of formal language.<br />
Only the first and fourth class will be considered at all here, but in<br />
terms of increasing generality (i.e., ability to execute larger and<br />
larger sets of algorithms to solve additional classes of problems) the<br />
four classes are as follows, ranked in what is known as the Chomsky<br />
hierarchy:</p>
<p> 1. Finite automata / Regular languages<br /><br />
2. Pushdown automata / Context-free languages<br /><br />
3. Linear bounded automata / Context-sensitive languages<br /><br />
4. Turing machines / Recursively enumerable languages<br /></p>
<p>A computer in the first class, when given a string of inputs,<br />
will indicate after each whether it accepts the input or not. Using the<br />
alphabet of possible inputs (the alphabet “ab” is one, but any alphabet,<br />
including ours, can be used) a finite automaton accomplishes useful<br />
computational tasks by accepting certain strings and rejecting others.<br />
Given that there are a finite number of words in the English language,<br />
including their inflected forms, a finite automaton using the “a-z”<br />
alphabet can be constructed to distinguish English words from other<br />
strings of letters. A large amount of enumeration would be involved, but<br />
the task could clearly be accomplished. Another automaton using the<br />
alphabet “ab” could be constructed to distinguish all strings [ab]*<br />
(which includes “abab” and “ababababab”), or b*[aaa]b* (which includes<br />
“aaabbbbbbb” and “bbaaab”), or - as the Chomsky hierarchy above<br />
indicates - any given “regular expression” of the sort Unix grep is used<br />
to find. In fact, it is correct to conceptualize the use of the Unix<br />
grep utility, or the Find dialog in Microsoft Word or one’s text editor<br />
of choice, as a way of programming a finite automaton. The programming<br />
is done so that strings in a regular language can be recognized; so the<br />
expression can be found in the text that is used as input for this<br />
simple computer. Of course, while the Find dialog is useful, it does not<br />
constitute a very powerful computer, and certainly not a general-purpose<br />
one. A finite automaton of this weakest class cannot even distinguish<br />
strings such as “aaaabbbb” and “aaaaaabbbbbb” (N occurrences of “a”<br />
followed by N occurrences of “b”) from those that do not fit this<br />
pattern. For this, a computer of at least the second class is<br />
needed.</p>
<p>
Before leaving the finite automaton, however, it is important to<br />
note that this simplest theoretical computer can be described in a<br />
diagram that has nodes linked by transition rules. The diagram shown<br />
here describes a finite automaton that accepts strings of the form<br />
[b]*a[b]*a - any number of “b’s” (including 0) followed by “a” followed<br />
by any number of “b’s”(including 0) followed by “a.”</p>
<p> <span style="width:100%;text-align:center;"><br /><img src="../../sites/electronicbookreview.com/files/essays/finite.gif" width="249" height="194" /><br /></span><br /></p>
<p>Note that the possible paths through a static Web site with<br />
five pages, each offering at most two sorts of link, can be<br />
conceptualized with a very similar diagram - with the same diagram, in<br />
fact, appropriately labeled. Hypertexts of the sort that typify the<br />
category - whether crafted in HTML or various proprietary environments<br />
such as the Microsoft Help Workshop or Eastgate’s Storyspace - present<br />
lexia (pages) as nodes, and links as transition rules. Such hypertexts<br />
are text machines of the first class, finite automata. Adding random<br />
effects, revealing or concealing links based on the history of<br />
interaction, or allowing the reader to jump to a node by name, will of<br />
course move the hypertext beyond this simplest level of computational<br />
complexity. But the essential definition of the form, a set of lexia<br />
connected by links, most clearly relates to the lowest and simplest<br />
level of the Chomsky hierarchy.</p>
<p>The computers sitting on our desks, stashed in our backpacks,<br />
and integrated into our cars and microwaves are (except for the<br />
non-theoretical fact that they have limited memory) Turing machines,<br />
devices of the fourth computational class. These general-purpose<br />
computing machines take input, provide output, and can solve any<br />
computer-solvable problem. Given inputs from the keyboard in the form of<br />
a string and allowing outputs to the monitor in the form of a string, a<br />
Turing machine can run Quake III, display GRAMMATRON, or beat Garry<br />
Kasparov in chess. Indeed, the computers that do these things are Turing<br />
machines. Computers may be slower or faster, and they are all ultimately<br />
constrained by disk space and RAM, but there is no known theoretical<br />
computer more powerful than a Turing machine. Because of its ability to<br />
compute any algorithmm that is computable at all, the Turing machine is<br />
also called a universal computer.</p>
<p>
The cybertext, according to Aarseth, is a machine for the<br />
production of expression. It may model a world underneath the textual<br />
surface (as is done in MUDs and text adventures), it may select<br />
conversational responses based on the reader’s textual input (as<br /><span class="booktitle">Eliza</span><br />
and<br /><span class="booktitle">Racter</span><br />
do), or it may (as in hypertext) offer additional lexia based on<br />
the links that the reader follows. The defining characteristic of these<br />
text machines - what distinguishes them from<br /><span class="booktitle">Ulysses</span>, for instance, however allusive and open to sampling that text<br />
might be - is that they calculate. They do not,<br /><span class="lightEmphasis">essentially</span>, have links. They essentially have computational ability.
</p>
<p>The paradigm of the hypertext is the least powerful<br />
computational machine, the finite automaton. The prototypical cybertext<br />
is of the fourth and most powerful computational class - a Turing<br />
machine.</p>
<h2>hot, ergodic cybertext</h2>
<p>
“Ergodics” and “cybertext” provoke curiosity. Aarseth attracts<br />
the reading eye by using one neologism each for title and subtitle. He<br />
has also selected terms that sound somewhat similar to the words<br />
“erotics” and “cybersex.” Cybertext is certainly a recent term, and new<br />
to literary studies, but Aarseth was not the first to use it. A book by<br />
science-fiction poet Bruce Boston, published in 1992, is titled<br /><span class="booktitle">Cybertext</span>. The term “ergodic” is used to denote a work that requires<br />
labor from the reader to create a path. This is not in reference to a<br />
traditional book that is difficult to read, of course. Aarseth is<br />
careful not to get wrapped up in metaphorically applying the idea of<br />
multiple paths, confusing reader response for influence over the<br />
actually presented appearance of the text, or employing Barthian uses of<br />
the term “writerly” to refer to someone who is not literally doing<br />
writing. Calvino’s<br /><span class="booktitle">If on a Winter’s Night a<br />
Traveller</span><br />
is not an ergodic work by his definition, since, whatever<br />
tortuous paths may be represented within it, there is only one course<br />
through it that is actually presented for the reader to take. Cort·zar’s<br /><span class="booktitle">Hopscotch</span><br />
is ergodic, by contrast, since the reader does choose a path -<br />
even though only one choice is explicitly presented, so there are<br />
actually only two explicit paths through the novel. “Ergodic” is<br />
borrowed by Aarseth from the field of ergodic theory, where it means<br />
something else entirely. The present use of the term is justified by the<br />
etymological roots of the word, which are in the Greek words for “work”<br />
and “path.”
</p>
<p>The text that constitutes a cybertext is not “a chain of<br />
signifiers” in the linguistic sense, Aarseth explains, but “a whole<br />
range of phenomena, from short poems to complex computer programs and<br />
databases.” Text includes natural human language, but also data<br />
structures, functions, procedures, and programmatic objects. The<br />
cybertext is considered as a machine, “not metaphorically but as a<br />
mechanical device for the production and consumption of verbal signs.”<br />
The text/machine operates on verbal signs, requires a medium (just as a<br />
filmstrip requires a projector), and depends upon the action of a human<br />
operator. These three elements are shown at the vertices of the<br />
text/machine triangle. This division clarifies several confusions -<br />
pointing out that we should attend to the medium as an important but<br />
distinct aspect of cybertextual experience, and suggesting that<br />
“operation” should be considered as fundamentally different than<br />
“reading,” which of course it is.</p>
<h2>text adventures and interactive fiction</h2>
<p>
In<br /><span class="booktitle">Cybertext</span><br />
there is examination of the aesthetics of hypertext, the<br />
experience of MUDs (environments that have received a good deal of<br />
attention from the perspective of cultural studies and computer mediated<br />
communication), the semiotics of an arcade-style computer game (a form<br />
seldom discussed even by game designers, which so far lacks even a<br />
critical vocabulary), and the nature of the “cyborg author”<br /><a class="internal" href="/firstperson/creole">Katherine Hayles<br />
reviews Diane Greco’s ‘Cyborg’</a><br />
and<br /><span class="booktitle">Eliza</span><br />
-descendent<br /><span class="booktitle">Racter</span><br />
(representative of an underexplored form, but one that has<br />
benefited from the examination and development done by Janet Murray).<br />
These discussions are useful, although not strikingly insightful. The<br />
chapter on MUDs, for instance, does not convincingly describe these<br />
environments as mainly literary, mainly ludic, or even mainly dramatic,<br />
rather than being essentially social. The discussion of<br /><span class="booktitle">Dark Castle</span><br />
and<br /><span class="booktitle">Lemmings</span><br />
effectively topples Peter B¯gh Anderson’s semiotic typology of<br />
the computer video game, but leaves open the question of what typology<br />
might work, or whether the perspective of distiguishing classes of signs<br />
is a fruitful one at all. (Aarseth’s discussion of the typology of<br />
texts, in which he distinguishes seven variables that apply to<br />
cybertexts, is one positive contribution along these lines.) In<br />
venturing into new territory, Aarseth points out areas of interest where<br />
future work can profitably be done.
</p>
<p>
The chapter exploring Marc Blank’s<br /><span class="booktitle">Deadline</span>, a work of interactive fiction from 1982, is particularly<br />
interesting - interesting to me, no doubt, because I work in this<br />
particular form. Aside from that, the chapter is unusual in considering<br />
interactive fiction in the context of literature. Such discussion has<br />
been almost entirely neglected by academics since Mary Ann Buckles’s<br />
1985 PhD thesis on<br /><span class="booktitle">Adventure</span>. Also interesting is that in this chapter, a cybertext with<br />
evident narrative elements is explored, - not the case during the<br />
discussion of MUDs and arcade games. These factors make it fruitful to<br />
look at the “Intrigue and Discourse in the Adventure Game” chapter in<br />
detail. The chapter also illustrates some of the practical difficulties<br />
involved in broadening the category of acceptable electronic literature<br />
to include other works, and reveals some of the benefits and insights<br />
which can come from such broadening - insights which would have been<br />
much harder to come by if critical discussion were restricted to<br />
hypertext.
</p>
<p>
The publisher of<br /><span class="booktitle">Deadline</span><br />
was the software development company Infocom (now a label of<br />
Activision), which also published<br /><span class="booktitle">Zork I-III</span><br />
and two works that attraced some notice for their literary<br />
merits, Brian Moriarity’s<br /><span class="booktitle">Trinity</span><br />
and Steven Meretzky’s<br /><span class="booktitle">A Mind Forever Voyaging</span>, The<br /><span class="booktitle">Zork</span><br />
series, based on a mainframe implementation of<br /><span class="booktitle">Zork</span><br />
at MIT, became the most widely-known commercial text adventure<br />
trilogy. It was strongly influenced by the earlier mainframe work<br /><span class="booktitle">Adventure</span>.
</p>
<p>Interactive fiction of the text adventure sort accepts textual,<br />
natural-language input from the individual formerly known as the reader.<br />
(Aarseth more aptly labels this individual the “operator.” I and others<br />
have used the term “interactor” in the past. Both terms suffice to show<br />
that manipulation of the cybertext is done by this individual, not just<br />
reading.) In response to this input, usually a command to the main<br />
character in the story, actions and events transpire in a simulated<br />
world and text is produced to indicate what has happened. Then, unless<br />
the character has progressed to some conclusion of the story, the<br />
operator is allowed to provide more input and the cycle continues.</p>
<p>
The phrase “interactive fiction” is used almost exclusively<br />
today among aficionados of this form (often it is abbreviated “IF”), but<br />
this term can cause loud gnashing of teeth among hypertext authors. They<br />
ask, “if these things are interactive fiction, what is my work - not<br />
interactive?” (This complaint usually comes from the people who brought<br />
you “serious hypertext,” a phrase that clearly suggests everything else<br />
is not serious.) This would be a reasonable question in many cases, but<br />
literary terms often employ adjectives that are not exclusively<br />
descriptive of a single form. One could ask a similar question about<br />
many other literary categories, after all: “If this is concrete poetry,<br />
what is my poetry, abstract?” “If this is language poetry, what is my<br />
poetry, not language?” “If this is a novel, what is my work, a passÈ?”<br />
The term “interactive fiction” is not a claim that the form it describes<br />
is the<br /><span class="lightEmphasis">only</span><br />
fiction that is interactive in any way. It was simply coined<br />
because interactivity and fiction are central features of this form,<br />
which also has other distinguishing characteristics that do not lend<br />
themselves to encapsulation in two words.
</p>
<p>The other main argument against use of the term is brought up<br />
by Aarseth, who correctly points out that the word “interactive” is a<br />
commercial catchword that has been used to promise vague technological<br />
enhancements and improvements. (Ironically, of course, Aarseth names his<br />
own category of literature “cybertext” - as if the “cyber” prefix were<br />
somehow less tainted by hype than is the word “interactive.”)<br />
“Interactive” is certainly no longer constantly denuded of meaning in<br />
the marketplace today, whatever false promises it may have once held<br />
out. Historically, that word, by itself, has been used to distinguish<br />
computer processes which reply to user input (just as interactive<br />
fiction does) from batch processes, which run without any user<br />
intervention. Used in that sense, of course, the term “interactive” is<br />
very broad, and would apply to hypertext fiction as well as many other<br />
programs. But the entire term “interactive fiction” has its own history.<br />
It was used by Adventure International, and later Infocom, to designate<br />
their works, referring to something of exactly the sort described above.<br />
The term has also been used in the academic discourse, specifically to<br />
refer to works similar to since the early 1980s.</p>
<p>
There is another reason to prefer the term “interactive fiction”<br />
over “text adventure.” Not all interactive fiction, and not even all<br />
classic works in the form, are actually text adventures, simply because<br />
not all of them are “adventures” - extraordinary explorations involving<br />
danger. In fact,<br /><span class="booktitle">Deadline</span><br />
is not a text adventure.<br /><span class="booktitle">Deadline</span><br />
is a detective mystery, in contrast to the fantasy adventures in<br />
the<br /><span class="booktitle">Zork</span><br />
series and the Infocom adventures that transpire in modern-day<br />
settings, such as<br /><span class="booktitle">Cutthroats</span><br />
by Michael Berlyn and Jerry Wolper and<br /><span class="booktitle">Infidel</span><br />
by Berlyn. Although interviewing murder suspects may be unusual<br />
for the interactor and may involve some danger to the protagonist, the<br />
situation is a very ordinary one for this main character, a detective.<br />
Most other famous interactive fiction works (including the very literary<br /><span class="booktitle">Mindwheel</span><br />
by Robert Pinsky) are true text adventures, so it is not the<br />
case that all text adventures are pulp and all other interactive fiction<br />
works are artifacts of high culture. It is the case, however, that the<br />
category “interactive fiction” is not synonymous with “text adventure,”<br />
and the former term is the appropriate one to define the whole category.
</p>
<p>
Similar arguments can be made against other proposed terms,<br />
namely “text adventure game” and “text game.” Some works of interactive<br />
fiction, in addition to not being adventures, are not games - certainly,<br />
they are no more games than are the least game-like hypertext fictions.<br />
And there are all-text games, like<br /><span class="booktitle">Rogue</span><br />
and<br /><span class="booktitle">NetHack</span>, which are not interactive fictions. The term “interactive<br />
fiction,” most widely used by those who actually create and experience<br />
these works, is the best descriptor for this category, and deserves to<br />
be re-established as interest in this form is reawakened.
</p>
<p>Discussion of terminology may appear to be useless quibbling,<br />
but it is very important if new types of ergodic literature are to be<br />
considered by hypertext authors and critics. It is very difficult for<br />
individuals to take some alien subcategory of the cybertext set<br />
seriously if they disagree vehemently about what that category should be<br />
called. If they happen to strongly prefer a name that sounds<br />
low-cultural and non-literary, it is all the more important to advance<br />
solid arguments for the commonly used and most precise term.</p>
<h2>meeting deadline</h2>
<p>
Aarseth examines “adventure game” interaction as exemplified by<br />
the murder mystery<br /><span class="booktitle">Deadline</span>. In this interactive fiction cybertext, both story and game,<br />
Mr. Robner has been found dead in his locked study and the operator must<br />
direct the detective to investigate, walking around the house in which<br />
the death occurred, examining things, and interviewing suspects. Aarseth<br />
comes to the conclusion that the operator, who is ignorant of the proper<br />
outcome and of what he or she is supposed to do, is actually not at all<br />
a “wreader” with strong authorial power, a similar conclusion to that<br />
which Buckles reached regarding<br /><span class="booktitle">Adventure</span>. Instead, the operator is what Aarseth calls an “intriguee,”<br />
the target of an elaborate intrigue perpetrated by the designer of the<br />
narrative world. This is a kinder interpretation than, but similar to,<br />
one I made in<br /><a class="outbound"></a>
href="http://www.suck.com/daily/97/01/27/"&gt;Interactor’s Nightmare, an article on Suck.com that was published during the same<br />
month<br /><span class="booktitle">Cybertext</span><br />
came out. There, I suggested that the operator of an interactive<br />
fiction usually is in the same situation as the protagonist of<br />
Christopher Durang’s<br /><span class="booktitle">Actor’s Nightmare</span><br />
- thrust upon the stage without any warning, without having had<br />
time to learn lines or even know what play is being enacted. Aarseth’s<br />
concept of intrigue, discovered in his encounter with a work of<br />
interactive fiction, applies to other cybertextual experiences as well.<br />
It could be used to enlighten critical discussion of works such as John<br />
McDaid’s<br /><span class="booktitle">Uncle Buddy’s Funhouse</span><br />
and Rob Swigart’s<br /><span class="booktitle">Portal</span>, which present puzzling worlds that the operator must decipher.
</p>
<p>
Aarseth only touches on the ludic nature of<br /><span class="booktitle">Deadline</span>, though he at least makes mention of the game-like qualities of<br />
this and other cybertexts. In a comment on one specific<br /><span class="booktitle">Deadline</span><br />
interaction, Aarseth complains that some of the replies provided<br />
are “pure nonsense,” giving the example of the work’s response to the<br />
command “fingerprint me”: “Upon looking over and dusting the me you<br />
notice there are no good fingerprints to be found.” Actually the<br />
response, although unhelpful in the context of trying to win the game,<br />
is sensible, amusing, and perfectly apropos. Aarseth no doubt wanted his<br />
detective protagonist to perform an odd behavior: to stop, ink his<br />
hands, and record his own fingerprints on paper in the middle of an<br />
investigation. For the interactive fiction to parse his command<br />
differently and come up with an even more odd interpretation is not<br />
nonsense, but felicity.
</p>
<p>
In a 1984<br /><span class="booktitle">Computer Games</span><br />
article, Dan Gutman urges operators to have fun by prodding the<br />
parser in similarly unusual ways: “after you’ve given up for the night<br />
trying to find out who the murderer is in<br /><span class="booktitle">Deadline</span><br />
or<br /><span class="booktitle">The Witness</span>, have some fun with the computer. Tell it a joke. Insult it.<br />
Type in a sentence which makes no sense.” This sort of subversive<br />
interaction is not particularly uncommon in any sort of gaming or play<br />
situation, as children often use toys and software for purposes that are<br />
different from or even contrary to those intended by the creators of<br />
these products.
</p>
<p>
<applet alt="Your browser does not support Java, or Java is not&lt;br /&gt;&#10; enabled." codebase="cyberdebates" archive="" code="ZPlet/Zplet.class"></applet>
width="409" height="409"&gt;</p>
<param name="Foreground" value="green" /><param name="Background" value="black" /><param name="StatusForeground" value="black" /><param name="StatusBackground" value="green" /><param name="StoryFile" value="ExDead.z5" /><p> <span class="emphasis">[Click above, type something, and press<br />
Enter to interact with this Deadline excerpt.]</span></p>
<p>
In interactive fiction, this subversive typing is an interesting<br />
way to interact, and has been recognized as such since early in the life<br />
of the form.<br /><span class="booktitle">Zork</span><br />
creators David Lebling, Marc Blank, and Tim Anderson mention<br />
this mode as one of two interesting ones (the other being the<br />
problem-solving mode of interaction) in their 1979 article in<br /><span class="booktitle">IEEE Computer</span>: “a great deal of the enjoyment of such games is derived by<br />
probing their responses in a sort of informal Turing test: ‘I wonder<br />
what it will say if I do this?’ The players (and designers) delight in<br />
clever (or unexpected) responses to otherwise useless actions.” The<br />
operator using the text/machine in this way is engaged, and enjoys the<br />
text responses that are provided, but seems to be ignoring the<br />
overriding interactive and narrative purposes for which the interactive<br />
fiction was purportedly created. This mode, perhaps, offers the true<br />
“play” that these “games” provide. Solving puzzles in order to advance<br />
in the story is actually more work than play, related to mathematical<br />
and logical challenge more than ludic enjoyment. The operator who solves<br />
puzzles must labor to understand the author’s intentions and slog<br />
forward, learning the correct operation of the text machine and then<br />
operating it. The one who pokes at the interface to see what will happen<br />
is actually being playful.
</p>
<p>In this chapter, as elsewhere, when Aarseth is not making<br />
strong original contributions, he is still practicing a basic standard<br />
of scholarship often not met by other writers. He corrects publication<br />
years given by previous authors; provides the names of actual<br />
interactive fiction authors, so often omitted in lieu of simply naming<br />
the publisher or pretending that the work sprang forth of its own<br />
accord; and insists that critics attend to other details with the same<br />
care they use in researching the citation of a printed text. That<br />
Aarseth attends so closely to the works he discusses is not a<br />
spectacular feature of the book, but such attention is necessary if<br />
previously neglected cybertexts are to be discussed alongside other<br />
works and treated with critical respect.</p>
<h2>ghosts and the text/machine</h2>
<p>
The epigraph for<br /><span class="booktitle">Cybertext</span><br />
is from Italo Calvino’s provocative essay, “Cybernetics and<br />
Ghosts.” It reminds the reader that</p>
<p class="longQuotation">The literature machine[’s] poetic<br />
result will be the particular effect of one of these permutations on a<br />
man endowed with a consciousness and an unconscious, that is, an<br />
empirical and historical man. It will be the shock that occurs only if<br />
the writing machine is surrounded by the hidden ghosts of the individual<br />
and his society.</p>
<p> These ghosts are not a major topic of discussion in<br /><span class="booktitle">Cybertext</span>. They flit outside of Aarseth’s text/machine triangle, without<br />
connecting to it directly as its verticies (operator, verbal sign, and<br />
medium) do. A moment of shock occurs during the encounter with any<br />
provocative text, whether generated cybertextually or not, and this<br />
moment is often profound and enigmatic. In the case of a cybertext, the<br />
shock can come not only from reading (the encounter with a particular<br />
permutation of verbal signs) but from reading in the specific context of<br />
text/machine operation.
</p>
<p>
It is this particular moment that may first have been<br />
experienced by Joseph Weizenbaum’s secretary, or perhaps one of the<br />
other early operators of<br /><span class="booktitle">Eliza</span>, a computer character Weizenbaum developed to simulate a<br />
psychotherapist. Operators of<br /><span class="booktitle">Eliza</span><br />
type replies to questions in plain English. The text/machine<br />
then issues a noncommittal response, sometimes excerpting from what the<br />
operator has typed. Although Weizenbaum had been working on the program<br />
for several months in the presence of his secretary (as he relates in<br />
his 1976 book<br /><span class="booktitle">Computer Power and Reason</span>), one day as she operated the text/machine, via a teletype, she<br />
asked him to leave the room so that she could converse in private.
</p>
<p>
A legend related by Janet Murray in talks after the release of<br />
her book<br /><span class="booktitle">Hamlet on the Holodeck</span><br />
offers a more powerful twist on this story. Entering his office<br />
one day, as the legend has it, Weizenbaum saw his secretary bowed before<br />
the teletype, broken down in tears. A transcript of interaction with<br /><span class="booktitle">Eliza</span><br />
was on the printout. “I’ve just had a breakthrough with my<br />
analyst,” the secretary explained.
</p>
<p>
Clearly, reading through a transcript of the same text, or<br />
clicking along links to read the doctor-patient dialog in a hypertext<br />
would not have had the same effect on this cybertextual operator. The<br />
operation of a cybertext such as<br /><span class="booktitle">Eliza</span><br />
is not only interesting because it results in a particular,<br />
provocative series of signifiers, but because it creates a context of<br />
operation - which might involve exploration, writing, and witnessing the<br />
reaction to what the operator has written, and engaging in other forms<br />
of advanced computational exchange.
</p>
<p>
<applet alt="Your browser does not support Java, or Java is not&lt;br /&gt;&#10; enabled." codebase="cyberdebates" archive="" code="Eliza/Eliza.class"></applet>
width="400" height="200"&gt;</p>
<param name="script" />
value="http://www.altxlists.com/ebressays/electropoetics/cyberdebates/script" /&gt;<br /><p> <span class="emphasis">[Click in the box, type something, and<br />
press Enter to interact with Eliza.]</span></p>
<p>
Whatever the early cybertextual encounter of computer<br />
psychotherapist and secretary was like - tearful or not - in it, this<br />
shock of connection with individual and social ghosts was certainly<br />
achieved. And this shock occurred about 35 years ago, as<br /><span class="booktitle">Eliza</span><br />
was developed between 1964 and 1966. After this incident (and in<br />
part as a result of it, if legend is to be believed), Weizenbaum, a<br />
pioneer in artificial intelligence, denounced the field. He stopped his<br />
research and drowned his book.
</p>
<p>
Cybertexts long ago demonstrated their potential to be<br />
provocative, affecting, and powerful. Thanks to Aarseth’s book, a larger<br />
literary category has been declared worthy of critical attention - a<br />
category which includes<br /><span class="booktitle">Eliza</span>, MUDs, poetry that involves text morphing and motion in<br />
response to input, interactive fiction, and other sorts of<br />
non-hypertextual works. Additionally, thanks to<br /><span class="booktitle">Cybertext</span>, authors who create works in these forms are more likely to<br />
find their efforts acknowledged as valid from a literary standpoint.<br />
Critics may still prefer to examine hypertexts, if their tastes in<br />
text/machine operation lead them to dwell on that set of cybertexts, but<br />
they will find it increasingly difficult to consider other cybertexts -<br />
with their more powerful computational abilities and their demonstrated<br />
ability to affect the consciousness and unconsciousness of the operator<br />
- as categorically less serious and worthwhile.
</p>
<p></p><h2>Works Cited</h2>
<p>
Buckles, Mary Ann.<br /><span class="booktitle">Interactive Fiction: The Computer<br />
Storygame ‘Adventure’</span>. PhD Dissertation, University of California San Diego, 1985.
</p>
<p>
Gutman, Dan. “Shoot Your Own Men! And Other Weird Ways to Play.”<br /><span class="booktitle">Computer Games</span>. Dac/Jan 1984.
</p>
<p>
Landow, George.<br /><span class="booktitle">Hypertext: The Convergence of<br />
Contemporary Literary Theory and Technology</span>. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992.
</p>
<p>
Lebling, David P., Marc S. Blank, and Timothy A. Anderson.<br />
“Zork: A Computerized Fantasy Simulation Game.”<br /><span class="booktitle">IEEE Computer.</span>, 12:4, 1979: 51-59.
</p>
<p></p><h2>programs included</h2>
<p>
Blank, Mark.<br /><span class="booktitle">Deadline</span>. (Excerpt allowing play for the first hour of game-time.)
</p>
<p>Infocom, 1982. Excerpt created in 2000 by Nick Montfort using a<br />
port of Deadline to the Inform language. Port to Inform by Volker Lanz,<br />
1999. Inform by Graham Nelson, 1993-1999. Excerpt created and used with<br />
permission of Activison, Inc.</p>
<p>
Russotto, Matthew.<br /><span class="booktitle">ZPlet</span><br />
1996. Java interpreter for Z-code, used to run the<br /><span class="booktitle">Deadline</span><br />
excerpt. Used with permission of Matthew Russotto.
</p>
<p>
Weizenbaum, Joseph.<br /><span class="booktitle">Eliza</span><br />
1964-66. Java version created and made freely available by<br />
Charles Hayden, based on a 1983 Macintosh version by Charles Hayden.
</p>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-inline clearfix"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/tags/chomsky-hierarchy">Chomsky hierarchy</a>, <a href="/tags/hypertext">hypertext</a>, <a href="/tags/cybertext">cybertext</a>, <a href="/tags/aarseth">aarseth</a>, <a href="/tags/deadline">deadline</a>, <a href="/tags/adventure-international">adventure international</a>, <a href="/tags/infocom">infocom</a>, <a href="/tags/zork">zork</a>, <a href="/tags/turing-machines">turing machines</a>, <a href="/tags/algorithm">algorithm</a>, <a href="/tags/eliza">eliza</a>, <a href="/tags/racter">racter</a>, <a href="/tags/ergodics">ergodics</a>, <a href="/tags/bruce-boston">bruce boston</a>, <a href="/tags/italo-calvino">italo calvino</a>, <a href="/tags/if-winters-night-traveller">if on a winter&#039;s night a traveller</a>, <a href="/tags/james-joyce">james joyce</a>, <a href="/tags/cortazar">cortazar</a>, <a href="/tags/hopscotch">hopscotch</a>, <a href="/tags/kat">kat</a></div></div></div>Tue, 31 Jan 2012 16:25:05 +0000EBR Administrator662 at http://electronicbookreview.com